“My husband Mike was born an artist of clay and steel; he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1993, and our lives changed dramatically. I was trained as a chef in France at the dawn of the butter/cream foodie revolution. Together, we accepted the challenge to adapt our skills and adjust our lifestyle to include healthier food, more exercise, and maintain the creation of art. How did we get from pre-diagnosis to where we are now?”

The Dodge: Guts, Glory, and Living at Full-Throttle

A man restoring life and glory to an aging, abandoned automobile isn’t unusual.
Inexplicable though is the car’s, almost human, response to the man’s slowly emerging disabilities.

Their 60-year journey of reciprocity begins in a Connecticut garage. It was love at first sight. Mike, a 17-year old Lewistown, Montana cowboy, wanted to own the1941 Dodge D-19 Luxury Liner convertible. She sat neglected and alone with a bale of hay on her backseat.

He stood in awe of her beauty and vowed, “Don’t worry. I may look young and inexperienced, but I’ve been around the barn a few times. I’ll figure out a way to get you.”

Two years after driving the Dodge home to Montana, Mike left her to go to war. Eventually she found herself at the bottom of a Montana coulee. Twenty years passed, a tree grew through her body and wildflowers flowed from her glove box.
She almost gave up hope of seeing him again. Meanwhile a silent invader took root inside Mike forcing him down into his own pit.

On forty acres outside Northfield, Minnesota, the car/man journey of rebirth folds Mike’s lifelong passion for cars into his wife, Anne’s love of food, plants and children. While Anne, a French-trained chef, provides peace and sustenance for guests at her country B&B, Mike, a potter and sculptor, juggles a robust auto restoration business in the basement of the garage with a pottery and sculpture studio upstairs. Life at full-throttle.

As Parkinson’s disease threatens to drastically alter the couple’s lifestyle, the Dodge adds a powerful ingredient to their Quality of Life recipe. This story of perseverance, love and commitment is not just a tale of restoring a “rolling sculpture.” For Mike and the Dodge, the evolution of their magical bond ultimately provides a life-line for both.

From Both Sides of the River

Anne Cutter Mikkelsen grew up in a boisterous Irish Catholic family in Anoka, Minnesota on the banks of the Mississippi River. In awe of her larger-than-life parents, Mary Helen, a radio soap opera writer who later transformed herself into Simone (Simca) Beck’s assistant in the South of France, and Darrah, a dashing WWII Navy flier and war hero who became an attorney and gentleman farmer, Anne and her seven siblings enjoyed an idyllic childhood…That is, until Anne turned sixteen, when her father vanished in the wilds of the Arctic.

Inspired by her mother’s indomitable spirit, Anne goes on to study classical French cooking, and becomes a restaurateur and host of a TV cooking show. But despite her career success and pleasure in raising her four children, her father’s mysterious disappearance casts a profound shadow over Anne’s life.

Two decades after losing her father, Anne discovers a record of her parents’ relationship—handwritten journals, letters, and one cryptic short story, which mystically appear when Anne needs them most. Seeking answers to what really happened to her father, Anne revisits her parents’ marriage, and is caught between what is memory and what is truth…and all that lies between. From Both Sides of the River is both an intimate portrait of a family, and the exhilarating story of how one woman’s journey into the past did indeed shine a new light on the people she loved. In illuminating her family’s story with tenderness and compassion, Anne helps us see our own.